


Cinderella, Interrupted

by Firerose



Category: Friday's Child - Georgette Heyer
Genre: Alternate Universe, Work In Progress, Yuletide 2004
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2011-01-21
Updated: 2011-04-17
Packaged: 2017-10-14 22:34:39
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 11
Words: 15,513
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/154203
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Firerose/pseuds/Firerose
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>'It's not fair! That's <i>my</i> fairy story!' An AU novella</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. In Which Our Heroine is Disposed Of Most Cruelly

**Author's Note:**

> Most of the subsidiary characters have been borrowed from Georgette Heyer's other novels with a Bath setting, _Bath Tangle_ , _Black Sheep_ & _Lady of Quality_ ; Lord Worth of course hails from _Regency Buck_. There is a spoiler for _Bath Tangle_ , which naive readers might wish to avoid. Alert readers might note a tiny crossover with Jane Austen's _Persuasion_. Whilst I have done my best to ensure period details are accurate, I am no historian and they should not be relied upon.

‘It’s not fair! That’s _my_ fairy story!’ was Hero’s first, irrational, thought.

It wasn’t, despite her unfortunate name, that she was a particularly romantic child, given to wild flights of fancy—but when one happens to be a penniless orphan residing with distant relations whose three girls were of such singular plainness as to be widely dubbed the Ugly Sisters, thoughts of the Handsome Prince riding by on his white charger to carry one off were simply bound to recur as one is fetching Cousin Jane’s parcel or mending Sophronia’s stockings or, as she happened to be that afternoon in late summer when Eudora burst into the drawing room, winding Cassandra’s wool.

Even before Eudora’s precipitous entrance caused her to drop the skein onto the carpet (where Agamemnon, Cousin Jane’s liver-and-white spaniel, immediately took to worrying it), it had been amongst the very worst weeks of all those years that Hero had sojourned in this world (almost seventeen, to be exact). Cousin Edwin’s kiss itself had been revolting enough, but his mother’s strictures on her supposed complicity in that event were hardly to be borne. Then when she’d tried to steal a few moments to herself, ensconced in her favourite place (a sunny spot on the estate wall that afforded an excellent view of any carriages that might chance to bowl past upon the lane), Sophy had found her out, and made her come back to the house to assist in Cassy’s labours at the tapestry frame.

The tumult in the drawing room a few moments after Eudora’s most unexpected announcement could scarcely be imagined, as each of the three sisters and their Mama spoke out at once.

‘But I’m the eldest, you can’t marry before me!’

‘I’ll be a Viscountess, just fancy that!’

‘A Viscountess! Oh my dearest, sweetest child! What pin money you’ll have! What servants! What carriages!’

‘Oh sister! You’ll be able to introduce me to all the handsome beaux you’ll meet at the London balls!’

‘But it isn’t fair, Mama! I _am_ the eldest! He should’ve proposed to me!’

‘You’ll all have to curtsey to me! Even Mama!’

‘You’ll reside in Grosvenor Square, to be sure – or in Sheringham Place – the old Dowager will simply _have_ to remove.’

‘I’m sure _I’ll_ marry an earl, or even a duke – and then _you’ll_ all have to curtsey to _me_!’

‘Papa should refuse his consent. Mama, do make Papa refuse his consent!’

‘And I’ll go to court to be presented to the Regent! Oh, Mama, I shall need ever so many new gowns! Mine are all so frightfully last season!’

‘But of course you shall have new gowns, my dearest child! We shall all repair to London and visit all the very best warehouses.’

‘But Mama, Eudie already has _two_ more new gowns than I do!’

And in the cacophony prevailing, Hero’s gentler pleas of ‘Oh, do please drop that, Aggie’ (to the dog) and ‘I do so hope you will be happy’ (to her cousin) passed equally without remark.

It was inconceivable, of course, that Mr Bagshot should refuse consent to such a highly advantageous suitor for his second daughter, however much his eldest might entreat such a course of action. Not even the Dowager Lady Sheringham herself, who called at an unfashionably early hour of the morning following to express her sentiments about what she termed ‘a most disgraceful match’ for her only son, could succeed in swaying him – not even when the dowager deigned to inform them that the sole reason the Viscount had lowered himself as to offer for ‘that hussy’ was a fit of pique that Miss Isabella Milborne had chanced to refuse him. In no small part to evade any continuation of their noble neighbour’s candour, it was shortly resolved that the entire family should remove with all possible haste to lodgings in the metropolis to accomplish that most important of wedding preparations: the purchase of the bride-to-be’s trousseau.

All, this is, except poor Hero. Furnished with a wife whose taste for grandeur ran far in excess of the modest acres of his ancestral estate, three daughters, only one of whom was advantageously engaged, and an heir recently down from Oxford and prey to all the usual expensive indulgences of young men in this state, all to support upon the capital, even Mr Bagshot, a rational, kindly man who had often taken Hero’s part in the past, had to acquiesce to his wife’s repeated representations that it was high time his ward should make her own way in the world.

Mr Bagshot (perhaps not fully cognizant of his role as Villain in this Fairy Tale) did think to consult the girl’s own wishes, but Hero was entirely resigned to her fate. If Anthony, as with a shocking want of deference she was prone to designate the Viscount Sheringham, were to be united with another, then she might as well be boiled alive in the cauldron of any passing Wicked Witch. Indeed, her greatest torment during this dreadful time was that Sherry’s oft-repeated description of Miss Eudora Bagshot as ‘a sourpuss with a face like a horse’s rear’ hardly spoke to his likely happiness upon entering the marital state. Hero suffered all those pangs of disappointment and distress he must be experiencing from his rejection at the hands of that Peerless Beauty, Isabella the Incomparable, down to the very last ounce—even though the lady herself averred, at the morning visit which was to serve these two childhood friends as their parting meeting, that ‘he doesn’t care one jot for me, to be sure.’

Unbeknownst to our heroine, that morning call was to decide her fortune. ‘A governess?’ exclaimed Mrs Milborne, distracted from her repetition of the assiduous attentions paid to the female scion of the Milborne family by no less a personage than a Duke of the realm by said scion’s mention of her former playmate’s projected future teaching in the Misses Mundesley’s Seminary for Young Ladies of Queen’s-square. ‘Why, Hero’s scarcely out of the schoolroom herself!’ that matron continued. ‘She will never suit. Far better send her as a companion, my dear Jane, much less trouble I’ll warrant. My dear friend Augusta – of course you recall Lady Augusta, Jane – wrote that her whist partner – I misrecall the name – was in sore need of a companion. Of course Augusta knows everyone of consequence in Bath. Here, let me show you her letter.’

And so it was settled: Hero was to go to Bath.


	2. In Which Our Heroine Falls on her Feet

It was with some trepidation that Hero knocked on the imposing front door of her new employer, a letter of recommendation from Mrs Milborne clutched in one tiny gloved hand and a trunk containing all her worldly goods resting rather precariously upon the honey-coloured step beside her neat little boots. Despite her grand resolution that Nothing Mattered Any More, the first encounter with the Wicked Witch must always be troublesome to the heroine—and besides, she was somewhat uncertain of her status as a lady’s companion: should she seek admittance rather at the tradesman’s entrance? The cream-liveried footman who threw open the door did little to allay her anxieties, conveying without a word spoken his negative opinion of her chip bonnet and sarcenet pelisse (the latter, though somewhat crumpled from the journey, being a parting gift from Isabella herself, and more modish by far than any of the second-hand items residing in her trunk). The supercilious stare that ensued when she timidly enquired if he might perhaps carry her portmanteau shortly reduced our heroine to quite unheroic snufflings, which had not yet abated when he pushed her into the morning room to meet her employer.

‘Miss Wantage, your ladyship,’ announced the footman.

Hero bobbed down in her most graceful curtsey, somewhat incommoded by the close inspection her ladyship’s lapdog chose to make of her skirts.

‘I can see that quite well, Charles,’ replied the august lady, without stirring from her armchair. She was quite the most ancient person our heroine had ever met. ‘Do, pray, make yourself useful and convey her portmanteau upstairs.’ The disgruntled footman having departed the room, her ladyship continued, ‘Pray remove that odious bonnet, Miss Wantage, so that I may take a look at you.’

With trembling fingers, Hero loosed her bonnet strings, and tried to rearrange her flattened ringlets in a more becoming fashion. As it happened, her flushed cheeks, tear-filled eyes and tousled locks formed an ensemble adorable enough to melt the hardest of hero’s hearts, if only there had only been any in the vicinity—but there was no-one to observe this touching picture besides the dowager, who regarded her in chilly silence for some time before pronouncing, ‘Dress three or even four seasons old, let out rather amateurishly. Pelisse rather newer, last season’s, I believe. _Eau de nil_ is not your colour, Miss Wantage.’

‘No, my lady,’ said Hero apologetically, and the silence resumed.

‘I hope you did not carry that portmanteau all the way from the White Hart,’ came the next severe utterance from the armchair (that being the name of the posting inn of the spa).

‘Of course not, ma’am,’ said Hero gravely—then spoiled the effect entirely by adding, ‘I pushed it, ma’am.’

A sharp barking sound resounded in the small parlour, and after a moment of confusion regarding the lapdog (which had lumbered back to the rug by the hearth) Hero realised that her ladyship must be laughing. ‘I see that whoever equipped you so lamentably did not neglect your schooling in the merits of speaking the truth to your elders.’ Her ladyship rose with surprising vigour for one so advanced in years, and clasped Hero’s delicate hand between her own liver-spotted ones. ‘I do believe that we shall deal remarkably well, Miss Wantage,’ she opined, ‘though you probably consider me quite the witch at the moment.’

‘Oh, no, my lady,’ rejoined Hero earnestly. ‘That is, I hope we shall deal well, and even cousin Jane – Mrs Bagshot, I mean – is not really a witch.’

Indeed Lady Saltash (for it was she) despite her shrivelled visage, arthritic hands and caustic mode of expression, seemed far better suited to the role of Fairy Godmother than that of Wicked Witch. Nine years in the bosom of the Bagshot family, moreover, had prepared our heroine admirably for the position of companion – though the shopping parades of a fashionable spa afforded far more distractions to the eye whilst carrying a parcel than the humbler establishments of Lower Duddleswell, and Lady Saltash favoured the court pages of the _Morning Post_ over the book of Jeremiah and employed a chambermaid to darn her stockings. Between fittings for more new gowns than she had owned in all her life before and the promise of a ball just as soon as her ball dress should be completed, it would have taken a heroine fashioned of sterner stuff than young Hero to quite pine away for love. She would not, however, be our heroine if she could entirely forget her troubles, and many a tear was shed or a sigh was heaved for her dear, sweet Anthony whenever she felt there was little danger of its being observed.


	3. A Ball & a Most Important Conversation

‘So, what d’you make of my dear Mr Tarleton?’ enquired the dowager, as they swayed their way back up the hill from the assembly rooms in the barouche that Lady Saltash always employed to travel about town, even though the distance could be no more than a half mile and Hero often considered (though she would never voice her thought) that her elderly coachman must surely have driven a hearse in his previous employment.

It had been Hero’s first ball, and none the worse for the fact that her ivory gown of French gauze with its festoons of pink roses was from Madame Lisette’s of the South Parade and not rags transformed by the sweep of a wand, while her exquisite little slippers were of satin adorned with seed pearls and not of glass (which would in any case have made for rather uncomfortable dancing). But none of the gallants who escorted her onto the floor of the Lower Rooms until the stroke of midnight that evening would Hero admit to the role of her Prince Charming: Mr Tarleton was far too stricken in years and Sir Carlton Frome too shatterbrained, General Crawley she dismissed as a dull gudgeon and Harry Beckenham, though unquestionably a handsome young blood, she thought laughably dandified.

When each of the evening’s partners had been found wanting in one fashion or another, Lady Saltash enquired, with her habitual directness, ‘You are not harbouring any prior attachments, are you, my child?’

‘Oh, no, ma’am,’ said Hero, and though her face was in shadow, a slight sniff gave her away.

‘Pray, what is his name?’ demanded her ladyship, though in a tone more kindly than stern.

‘There is no-one, ma’am, truly,’ returned Hero, with an effort to control her tears indeed worthy of a heroine. ‘That is, Anthony, I mean, Lord Sheringham—’ and here she broke off, liberal application of the handkerchief from her ladyship’s reticule being required before another word could escape her trembling lips. After repairing to the house, a dose of ratafia loosening Hero’s tongue, the sorry tale was at last disclosed. Still enveloped in her rose-pink mantle, with the lace handkerchief crumpled in her hand, our heroine presented the very portrait of dejection amidst all the elegance of the Camden Place drawing room.

‘When did you say they were to be married? Christmas?’ enquired Lady Saltash – for Hero’s account, though heartfelt, had been a little confused as to some of the more earth-bound details of this _affaire de coeur_. ‘Depend upon it, my dear, had his heart been truly engaged he would have carried her off at once.’

Once again the sobs burst forth, once again the succour of the handkerchief was sought – and it became apparent that the dowager had but imperfectly comprehended the well-spring of her young friend’s distress. ‘Now Isabella writes from town that Sherry’s gone entirely to pieces,’ Hero explicated, with as much of an air of tragedy as could be managed between snuffles.

‘Fiddlesticks!’ pronounced her ladyship. ‘Anthony? Gone to pieces over some chit of a girl? And do cease that wailing, my dear child. Nothing could be more vulgar.’

Hero did her best to obey this injunction. ‘Do you know Sherry, then?’

‘I’ve been acquainted with Anthony these twenty years or more, and that boy has been headstrong to a fault since the day that first he learned to toddle. A true Verelst! The likelihood of his going to the devil over something as slight as an unfortunate engagement seems small, when he has not succeeded in doing so in all his previous three-and-twenty years of existence.’

‘But Isabella writes—’

‘Miss Milborne’s concern for a gentleman whose suit she has rejected is most touching,’ declared the dowager dryly. ‘I dare say, as she has no brothers and Severn is such a milk toast, the girl may truly believe that a little overindulgence in society’s pleasures and a few trifling debts of honour constitute “going entirely to pieces”, as you so delicately put it. Now, dry those tears, my dear child, and let us hear no more of this affair.’ She patted Hero’s tear-swollen cheek. ‘You are not so much as to _mention_ Anthony’s name – let us see if Bath cannot supply a cure for your bruised heart.’


	4. In Which Our Heroine First Encounters the Hero

One sunny afternoon some few days after the conversation described, our heroine chanced to be walking along Union-street, engaged upon some commissions for her employer. Between parasol, parcels and pug’s lead on the one hand, and the most melancholic of reflections on the other (being of an obedient disposition, Viscount Sheringham’s name had not graced her lips during the intervening days, but her thoughts could not be so readily governed), she quite neglected to pay attention to her surroundings, and tripped daintily out into the bustling thoroughfare of Cheap-street at its busiest point, hard by that axis round which Bath society whirled: the Grand Pump Room.

It was doubly unfortunate that Hero’s lapse should occur just as a smart curricle from the London direction should be manoeuvring to encounter a broad cart coming from Clifton. The curricle was forced to swerve and pull up most sharply, and it was only the extreme dexterity of its driver and the agility of his pair of purebreds that avoided the most calamitous of accidents. As soon as his chestnuts had calmed and cart had squeezed past curricle without injury to canary-yellow paintwork, the driver dismounted and approached our fair heroine where she sat, parasol, parcels and pug alike scattered in all directions.

Though the gentleman’s eyes could by no means be described as cerulean orbs, though the locks peeping out from beneath his beaver could not rightly be compared with golden-ripe corn, though his greatcoat was adorned with far too many capes (not to mention a double row of gleaming silver buttons) to conform with her countrified tastes, the _tout ensemble_ needs must be entrancing to our heroine when in the guise of her Preserver—that is, had her Preserver’s first words been other than, ‘What the deuce d’you think you were doing, miss?’

Acutely conscious of her fault, Hero made a return so gentle, so conciliatory, as to have furnished any common-or-garden Handsome Prince with most ample conviction of her heroic nature. Despite this undoubted circumstance, the curricle driver persisted in punctuating his services – that is, reassembling her parcels and recapturing her ladyship’s pug – with muttered remarks of the form, ‘Dashed silly thing to stroll out plum in the middle of the road’ or ‘Devilish lucky not to meet some cow-handed driver’. The poor pug, being almost as advanced in years as its owner, fortunately proved too deaf to be much disturbed by all the commotion, and Hero was soon restored upon her round of errands, without even having been prevailed upon to provide her Preserver with such essential intelligence as the name by which he might be privileged to call her before he drove off at a spanking pace in his gaily-painted conveyance.

*~*

If our heroine, on her return to Camden Place, noticed the hat and driving gloves upon the table in the hall, she paid them little heed. Lady Saltash liked nothing better than a comfortable coze with several of the older gentlemen resident in the town, and if it were not General Crawley ensconsed in the drawing room, it would surely prove to be Jasper Tarleton. Besides, Hero was revolving in her mind the delicate question of how best to break to her employer that Sir Joshua’s footboy had been before her at Meyler’s Library, so that Lady Saltash would have to wait for the latest offering from Mr Egerton until all the Misses Weaverham had taken their turns.

Hero resolved, as she pushed open the drawing room door, to rush her fences (as she was sure Sherry would advise). Accordingly, she began, ‘I am afraid, ma’am, that I had to borrow _The Antiquary_ , by the Author of _Waverley_ , instead of—’ when the words stopped in her mouth. A figure, taller than Mr Tarleton and slimmer than the General (who favoured corsets for evening engagements), was rising from the armchair beside the fire. ‘Oh,’ she breathed, and then, with more regard to curiosity than to propriety, enquired, ‘What are _you_ doing here?’

‘Hero, may I present my grandson, Gilbert Ringwood,’ said Lady Saltash. ‘This is Miss Wantage, Gilbert, of the Norfolk Wantages, you know.’

‘Thought I recognised that deuced dog of hers – given it to her, have you, ma’am?’ rejoined the driver of the canary-yellow curricle – for, of course, it was he. ‘Dare say she may be a Norfolk Wantage, never can tell who might pop up in these country families, but she dashed near overturned my curricle not an hour ago! Wool-gathering in the middle of Cheap-street, if you can credit it!’

Lady Saltash looked fiercer than Hero had ever seen her – almost like Cousin Jane when something chanced to cross her will – and our poor heroine feared that she should shortly be turned out upon the streets with nothing but her gown and bonnet (and perhaps the unwanted copy of _The Antiquary_ ). But Hero’s soft-voiced apologies, as with the flick of a wand, transformed Wicked Witch back to Fairy Godmother.

‘I collect that I am behindhand with my introductions,’ said Lady Saltash, lightly. ‘A curricle accident!  I don’t know what we would do for news here in Bath without you youngsters to enliven the scene! I dare say no harm was done, for, Gilbert, you are quite the neatest driver of all my grandsons! And your chestnuts – you have brought the chestnuts, have you not? Your chestnuts were the talk of the town for their agility when last you visited.’

‘Deuced fine sweet-goers,’ averred her grandson, disclaiming the compliment to his driving.

‘Perhaps, Gilbert, you might care to teach my young friend to handle the ribbons?’

‘Oh, might you?’ breathed Hero. ‘That would be above anything!’

Mr Ringwood had never carried a female in his curricle, as his grandmother well knew, and the idea of entrusting the mouths of his purebreds to a stranger! A lady! He could echo Miss Wantage, that would indeed be above anything! He preferred boxing to waltzing, and riding to hounds to either; no-one had ever accused him, save in jest, of wishing to become a tenant for life, nor even (in strong contrast to several amongst those he called his friends) observed him laying out his blunt on any of those barques of frailty with which the capital was amply provided. If truth be told, living upon a meagre income and expectations from more than one wealthy relative, he seldom laid out blunt unnecessarily on anything. In short, he had gained but little experience of feminine entreaties in all his six-and-twenty years of existence, and nothing, but nothing, had prepared him for a pair of speaking grey eyes, set beneath tumbled ringlets, and presently employed in gazing up at him as if he had this very moment descended from Heaven.

‘I say,’ he said, feebly.

Lady Saltash added, with something akin to a malicious gleam in her eyes, ‘You may use my phaeton and take Snowy, if you would rather.’


	5. In Which Our Hero Bravely Faces Travails

Had Mr Ringwood been of a bookish disposition, he might have likened his grandmother’s commission to capturing Cerberus of the Underworld, or some similar fancy. As his days at Eton had been spent more in the contemplation of shooting dogs than supernatural ones, such notions entirely failed to enter his head – and had anyone suggested the idea, he would no doubt have thought them touched in the upper works to bother with an animal sporting two more heads than the common allowance. His valet, as he laid out fresh driving raiment at an abominably early hour of the following morning, did overhear him muttering a dark suspicion that mischief-making had become the dowager’s favourite pastime in her declining years, but Chilham (a sensible man, who was well aware of the fact that his master held her ladyship in considerable affection) ascribed the uncharitable sentiment to his having overimbibed of the White Hart’s brandy after supper the evening before, and thought no more of it.

Fortune smiled on the morning’s excursion. No mishap befell the phaeton, despite John Coachman’s grim prediction that a vehicle which had last been aired before the passing of Princess Amelia was like to prove as roadworthy as a pumpkin. Hero (as she insisted Mr Ringwood should call her) proved a natural with the ribbons, to her surprise as much as his – and in her cerise driving habit and demure poke bonnet, with the crisp weather bringing roses to her cheeks, she was devilish taking. Indeed, once safely restored to his lodgings at the aforementioned inn, Gil had to own that the morning’s labours had passed more agreeably than he could have believed possible.

To his chagrin, however, he found that even the successful completion of the task his grandmother had set him was not enough to exonerate him from joining her and her charge at the Pump Room at noon.

‘Seeing as the present month might be said to fall between seasons, sir, I ventured to enquire at the Assembly Rooms as to who was presently in residence,’ remarked Chilham, as he shrugged his master into his third-best coat, ‘and I believe this will suffice.’ When that tricky operation had been completed, he added, with a sly glance at his master in the cheval glass as he smoothed down the wrinkles across the shoulders, ‘Unless, of course, sir, you were desirous of making an impression?’

Gil disclaimed such an outlandish notion. Like any man of fashion who resided in the metropolis, he disdained the simple pleasures offered by the provincial spa as suitable only for gouty generals, rheumaticky dowagers and schoolroom misses practising for their come out. He had, though, to admit to a sneaking sensation of relief that his valet had not elected to lay out his other, bottle-green coat; he always worried that, despite Chilham’s best efforts, it had never quite recovered from an unfortunate _contretemps_ with a bowl of hot rum punch one night when he had been a trifle foxed, and his grandmother could be deuced particular in all matters of dress.

*~*

The Pump Room formed the very heart of Bath society, where everyone assembled each forenoon to parade the latest fashions, compare the symptoms of their ailments, bemoan the taste of the waters, peruse the subscription book for the newest arrivals on the London coach, and, most importantly, exchange that universal currency of all watering places: gossip. The town being rather thin of company, as Chilham had earlier discovered, the vast room with its lofty windows and sparkling chandeliers was three parts empty. The chimes of the great Tompion clock (though it was second in fame only to the waters themselves) could supply but a paltry substitute for the sweet strains of the orchestra that beguiled the crowds from the gallery during the season, and the footsteps of the promenaders echoed most lamentably.

One at least of those present, however, perceived nothing lacking: Hero, in her primrose walking dress and levantine pelisse, knew herself to be all the crack. She was, in fact, gaining quite as much attention from the gentlemen of the Pump Room as their elegant neighbour on Camden Place, Miss Wychwood, who had enjoyed an unchallenged place amongst the jewels in Bath’s crown for some two or three seasons. (Our heroine, artless as a kitten, was all unaware of the stir she was creating, so it fell to her more worldly-wise companion to savour this circumstance to the full.) Lady Saltash, having done duty to her health by draining her habitual glass still hot from the pump, was engaged in the less onerous duties of hailing her considerable acquaintance and exchanging opinions on the latest tidbit of news over which all Bath was a-twitter – for Major Kirkby had announced his engagement to the beautiful Lady Fanny Spenborough, and her only just having put off her black gloves!

‘Gilbert! At long last!’ exclaimed the dowager, some minutes after the great clock had struck twelve. ‘I was beginning to think that my chit had done you up.’

Hero hastened to thank Mr Ringwood for his attentions of the morning, and she did it very prettily. ‘You can’t imagine how patient he was, ma’am, and how kind,’ she concluded, ‘even when I was so chicken-hearted as to be afraid when Snowy kicked up a little frisky—’

‘Now, now, child,’ said her ladyship. ‘No need to flatter the boy. You had best have another jaunt tomorrow morning, Gilbert, this mild spell won’t hold forever. Now, if you would just help me to that sofa there, I shall leave you young things to amuse yourselves for a while.’ And so saying, the dowager joined her particular cronies, Mrs Mandeville and Mrs Stinchcombe, upon an elegant settee, and the three formidable dames put their bewigged and turbanned heads together.

Hero commenced pointing out the Sights of Bath – old Mrs Floore, with her panniers and her feathers; Admiral Longbottom, of such prodigious girth that any ship he commanded must surely have straightway turned turtle – then recalling that Mr Ringwood must already be well acquainted with the town, she fell silent.

‘You must not let Lady Saltash bullock you into teaching me to drive if you find it disagreeable,’ she began again, with a devastating frankness.

‘Be a pleasure to teach you anything in my power,’ Gil replied – and as she raised sparkling eyes to his face, he almost meant it.

‘Really?’ She smiled up at him, her dimples peeping. ‘For I thought you must surely be what they call a… a regular nonpareil.’

‘Not sure y’could call me that,’ he mumbled, blushing. ‘Best driver of my friends, might be some sense to saying that! Ferdy better turned out. Sherry mighty handy with his fives. George by far the best shot of the pack of us. Curricle Worth the neatest driver in the FHC. Not a friend, you understand! Above my touch: Earl, you see.’

But Hero did not see; indeed, to own the truth, she had heard not a word about Lord Worth. Sherry! Mr Ringwood knew her own dear Sherry! Hero could not help but remember him using those fives to knock Eudora Bagshot down for locking her in the coal cellar overnight. She’d had bread and gruel in her room for weeks and weeks after that, but it had been worth every minute to know that her dear Anthony had fought for her! Tears welled up in her eyes at the thought, and despite all Lady Saltash’s strictures, she could not suppress just the tiniest of sniffles.

Turning aside to cover her lapse and withdrawing an embroidered handkerchief from her reticule, her gaze alighted on the pumper, who chanced to be close by. ‘Oh! I’m quite forgetting my manners,’ she said. ‘Will you take a glass of the water?’

‘Wouldn’t touch it for the world! Never been sure the water you drink ain’t the same water people bathe in. Stands to reason: hot!’

‘Oh! But Lady Saltash drinks it every afternoon.’ Hero was much moved. ‘I do so hope it isn’t dangerous!’

‘Constitution of an ox,’ he assured her. ‘Already outlasted three husbands. Don’t suppose a drop or two of water’ll carry her off.’

‘Do tell me more about your grandmother, Mr Ringwood!’ she implored. ‘I can never get her to talk about her past, she always turns the conversation—if it isn’t a secret,’ she added, suffering a sudden attack of conscience. ‘Perhaps there are circumstances she wouldn’t care to be generally known.’

‘Dare say there are. Every family has ’em. Why, damme if my friend George don’t turn out to be acquainted with a bishop! Now there’s a thing you wouldn’t want to get around!’

Hero, anxious to avoid a recital of the skeletons in the closets of all of Mr Ringwood’s friends, gently drew him back to the topic in hand.

‘Quite the beauty in her day,’ Gil began, casting his mind back with a little difficulty to the reminiscences of his mother, who had died some few years earlier. ‘Like the Incomparable, though not in her style. Dark. Flashing eyes, that sort of thing.’ He gestured vaguely. ‘Married devilish young. Must’ve been when she was about your age. Peerless Penelope, they called her.’

‘Penelope!’ exclaimed Hero. ‘What an adorable name!’

But any further confidences were interrupted by the lady herself, come to ask her grandson to call the carriage. ‘Oh, and Gilbert,’ she added, ‘I hope you have brought your knee-smalls?’

‘Can’t say, ma’am,’ he hedged. ‘Would have to ask my man.’

‘For my friend Mrs Stinchcombe has been so kind as to invite us all to her rout-party on Saturday, in the Sydney Gardens.’

‘An evening party? With fireworks? And illuminations in the labyrinth?’ exclaimed Hero, just as Mr Ringwood uttered, ‘An evening party? In Sydney Gardens? In _October_?’

‘Just a small, informal affair, you collect, to take advantage of this unseasonable mild weather,’ rejoined her ladyship. ‘And lest you should think it a paltry, dull affair beside all your London entertainments, Gilbert, Mrs Stinchcombe said to be sure to tell you that she holds there can be no objection whatsoever to waltzing at a purely private party.’


	6. A Letter from London

The leaves assumed their autumn tints, then dropped from the trees lining Upper Camden Place, to be whisked away by the street-sweepers; the first hoar frosts of winter painted the windowpanes white and glazed the morning pavements; roast chestnuts succeeded roses in the wares cried around the streets of Bath; but our heroine – lost in a whirl of balls and dinner parties, plays and concerts, expeditions as far afield as Farley Castle and Wookey Hole, and even a trip to the races – scarcely noticed the advance in seasons. Under Mr Ringwood’s patient tutelage in handling the ribbons, Hero developed a fine, light hand and a precision of line; though Gil would never permit her to drive his curricle, he did eventually condescend to teach her how to manage a pair, and Hero dreamed of one day learning to point her leaders. His grandmother schooled her to conceal her emotions, imparted a deal of confidence and poise, and passed on all the little niceties of fashion and etiquette, till her Bagshot relatives would hardly recognise their dowdy dab of a cousin. Lady Saltash’s efforts were crowned with her young pupil receiving the ultimate accolade: being designated ‘a very prettily behaved gel’ by that leader of Bath society, the high stickler Mrs Wendlebury.

Her ladyship’s bosom-bow, Mrs Mandeville, went so far as to enquire whether her friend intended Hero for her grandson, but even she was not so bold as to pursue the question when Lady Saltash merely laughed and turned the subject. Indeed, the persistence of Mr Ringwood’s attentions, and the confidence that seemed to subsist between the two, had given rise to the general opinion in the watering place that theirs would be the next engagement to grace the pages of the _Gazette_ , but if this view was shared by the two persons most concerned by it, they never spoke of it, even to each other.

Isabella proved a faithful correspondent, and her letters furnished Hero with regular news of the capital, or at least those parts of it that a virtuous young lady might commit to the page without a blush. They accordingly contained but little intelligence of Lord Sheringham, whose wilder excesses, as the day appointed for his nuptials approached inexorably, shocked even those of rather less propriety than Miss Milborne. (The only missive Gil received during these months was a curt note from his landlord regarding his rent; if his friends wondered at his spending so much of the shooting season sojourning in Bath, they surely put it down to his pockets being all to let after a particularly bleak settling day at Tatt’s, his grandmother being known to disburse good dinners, fine claret and the occasional rather generous present.)

It wanted but a few days to Christmas when the latest letter from Green Street was conveyed to Hero with her morning cup of hot chocolate. Lady Saltash having declared the ponderous progress of his Grace of Severn’s courtship most diverting, Hero hastened to don her wrapper and carry the tray through to her ladyship’s dressing-room, within whose snug walls it had become their custom to break their fast (the elegant breakfast parlour with its high ceiling being decidedly chilly in the winter months before the sun reached its windows).

‘Oh, ma’am!’ she called through the half-open door to her employer’s bed-chamber, ‘Isabella writes that the Duchess actually paid her Mama a morning visit! And to invite her to spend Christmas at Severn Towers! Gil says she will never bring him up to scratch, but—’

‘Must I warn you again, child, about picking up such barbarisms from my appalling scamp of a grandson?’ interrupted Lady Saltash. ‘If you will not guard your tongue, don’t doubt that I shall box your ears!’

Not one whit abashed (for her ladyship, despite frequent reiterations of such threats, had never done any worse than chuck her beneath the chin), Hero continued, between sips of chocolate and nibbles of toast, to peruse her letter. On turning the leaf, she was startled to see that Isabella, normally the neatest of penwomen, had blotted the page not once but thrice!

‘Oh, no!’ she uttered softly, on deciphering her friend’s words – and when Lady Saltash entered some minutes later, it was to find our heroine in floods of tears, the letter on the floor beside her daintily slippered feet, and Pug helping himself from the plate of buttered toast!

‘Now, now, my love! Whatever can be wrong? Don’t tell me that you have a _tendre_ for Severn, for I shall not believe it!’

‘No, ma’am,’ sniffed Hero, between sobs. ‘Such horrible, horrible news!’

‘ “Lord Sheringham is gone out of town,” ’ read out her ladyship, not scrupling to pick up the letter to discover the truth for herself. ‘You cannot surely be in a taking over that!’

‘Oh, no, ma’am!’

‘ “George is fled the country” – Miss Milborne has been reading a deal too many novels – “gravely wounded and like to die” – now, what is this?’

‘George – I mean Lord Wrotham – Gil’s friend – has – has killed someone in a duel!’

‘Hush, my dear child,’ soothed Lady Saltash. ‘I dare say it is not as bad as that.’

But when _The Observer_ was brought up, it did indeed prove quite as bad as that. There could be no doubt: Sir Montagu Revesby had been fatally wounded in a duel with Lord Wrotham, and the Baron had been forced to make a dash to the Continent to evade the Bow Street Runners.


	7. An Unexpected Visitor

In the lower half of town, Gil Ringwood was already stirring from his bed-chamber, as his grandmother cut the pages of _The Observer_ half a mile away: the weather continuing clear, he had a standing engagement to accompany Hero in the phaeton to explore the hills that hemmed in the town. (And in truth, rising with the sun was not such a trial to our hero as in former times: finding that even the card-rooms of the spa closed their doors at midnight sharp, and that getting castaway over a jug of brandy was but a paltry occupation when his boon-companion, Mr Fakenham, did not share it, Gil had taken to retiring at an hour that would cause his London cronies to stare.) Duels with mortal outcomes not being so ten-a-penny, in these prosaic days, as to be quite ignored even by the sporting papers, Gil received the awful tidings at almost as early an hour as our heroine.

How he took the news was difficult to discern. Not being in the habit of exchanging many words with his valet of a morning, his taciturnity passed unremarked – though Chilham did feel cut to the heart at being designated a ‘dashed fool!’ for such a minor misdemeanour as spilling a drop, just a _drop_!, from his master’s shaving jug. When the urgent rap sounded upon the door of the private parlour that he had bespoken for his stay, Gil was half expecting it – though when Chilham announced the visitor, his first words were a brusque, ‘Well, I wasn’t expecting _you_!’

‘Fine way to greet a fellow you ain’t seen in almost three months!’ exclaimed Sherry. ‘Who the devil _were_ you expecting?’

‘Why, George, of course!’

Lord Sheringham having spent a few days at his hunting box near Melton Mowbray until a succession of heavy frosts had put an end to all sport, he had yet to hear the news, which might be deemed to afflict him doubly, as he called both parties in the affair his friends. Gil gently imparted the sad facts, adding, in a tone of resignation, ‘A man can’t expect to call people out because they look at him funny – _and_ be the best shot in the country – without putting a period to some poor devil’s existence eventually. Stands to reason! Here, old boy, take a gander at that while I go and arrange my neckcloth.’

Sherry cast his eye over the proffered paper, threw it down and paced about the room – with his brow furrowed, his hair tousled, he looked for all the world like Lord Wrotham himself (though he did not go so far as to affect a Belcher handkerchief). He threw himself into one of the carvers drawn up at the table and, with a gusty sigh, rested his head in his hands. When his friend at last signalled his satisfaction with the fruits of his labours, he enquired, in frantic accents, ‘But what am I to do?’

‘Nothing to do done! Dare say even Chilham’ – who was just then laying out the breakfast dishes – ‘couldn’t come up with a way out of this fix!’

‘Chilham!’ exclaimed his lordship. ‘The very man!’

Gil was posing the tricky question of Lord Wrotham’s plight to his valet when Sherry slammed his fist down on the table, almost oversetting a nearby tankard and donating to a platter of roast beef a liberal dressing of ale that had certainly not been intended by the White Hart’s chef.

‘I say, steady on, old chap!’ said Gil, mindful of that hostelry’s rather steep charge for breakages.

‘No, no!’ cried Sherry. ‘Not _that_ fix! George is done for! He might as well go and blow his damned brains out! D’you think I drove over a hundred miles down here, to a town I loathe, on the hazard that _George_ had got himself into a scrape? _Hang_ George!’ (His friend winced at the unlucky turn of phrase.) ‘What am I to do about this curst marriage of mine!’

‘What marriage?’ Gil enquired, then added, with an air of one whom nothing could surprise any more, ‘You didn’t get married while you was down in Leicestershire, did you, dear boy?’

‘No, of course not! Why the devil would I want to do anything as cork-brained as that? When a man’s dashed wedding’s in a week, the very _last_ thing on his mind is matrimony, I can assure you! Now, what I want to know is this: how the devil can I hedge off!’

Chilham pronounced, when the tangled tale of the betrothal between Lord Sheringham and Miss Eudora Bagshot had been unravelled, that there was no sure way for a gentleman to be released from an unfortunate engagement without laying himself open to a breach-of-promise suit.

‘That won’t do,’ rejoined Sherry. ‘If I know that curst Bagshot woman, once she’s got the bit between her teeth, she won’t stop till she’s jumped all her fences!’

‘What fences? Moment ago you was talking about getting married! Do keep to the point, dear boy!’

‘If I might interpose a word, sir, your lordship’ – and Chilham executed his little bow – ‘the wisest course might be to persuade the lady to withdraw.’

‘I’ve tried that!’ exclaimed his lordship. ‘Damme, what d’you think I’ve been doing!’

Having failed to pop in a hit over his lordship’s guard, Chilham countered with an unruffled, ‘Will that be all, sir?’ made another bow, and retired from the ring.

Sherry ticked off his exploits on his fingers. ‘Tried dropping a monkey at the roulette tables at Pickering Place each night for a week. That just left me at a standstill! My uncle Prosper, curse the lazy dog, refuses point blank to wind up the Trust till my neck is actually in the halter, would you credit it!’ (Lord Sheringham having displayed no discernable predilection for Miss Bagshot – if anything the reverse – before, or after, their betrothal, it must be assumed that the freak of his fortune being tied up in Trust until his marriage, or the twenty-fifth anniversary of his birth – and the pressing obligations to his creditors resulting – had not been absent from his mind at the fatal moment when he had tossed the handkerchief in that lady’s direction.)

‘Tried getting drunk as a wheelbarrow on Blue Ruin, and casting up my accounts on her gown,’ he continued. ‘All that did for me was a damned headache the next morning! Never knew the curst stuff was so foul! Got locked up by the Watch – rode plum across town in my night clothes – even tried inviting a pair of light-skirts, proper Paphians they were, to join our party in Vauxhall Gardens! I tell you, Gil, nothing does the trick! They’re always “honoured to receive you, your lordship!” I dare say they’d be “honoured to receive you, your lordship!” if I planted my betrothed a facer, and I’ve come within an ames ace of that a dozen times!’

‘Looks like there’s nothing for it but a bolt to the Continent, old boy,’ opined Gil, shaking his head. ‘Y’might meet George,’ he said, with an air of one unearthing a cunningly concealed silver lining. After some minutes of silent contemplation, fortified with some buttered eggs washed down with ale, he added, ‘Or I suppose you could marry the girl. You considered that, Sherry?’

The howl of rage from Sherry’s end of the table, and the ominous way that he was curling up his fists, combined to suggest it was a lucky stroke for Gil’s safety that another rap just then sounded at the door.

‘I say, it’s getting quite like Piccadilly Circus in here!’ observed Gil, never at his most sociable before the hour of eleven.

‘That’ll be my cousin Ferdy. Left him managing the luggage at the York. He insisted on putting up there, rather than here – kept going on about _singing_ , of all things! You know how he is when he takes some hare-brained notion into his head, best to humour him.’

Gil passed over the insult to his friend, for the first time taking in the import of Sherry’s somewhat crumpled attire. ‘Don’t mean to say you tooled down from Melton _overnight_?’ he enquired, incredulously.

‘Dashed right we did,’ rejoined Mr Fakenham, entering in time to catch the question.

‘With Sherry driving? Surprised you didn’t end up in a ditch!’

‘Damned near thing, at Bishop’s Cleeve,’ owned Ferdy.

‘Unfortunate altercation with the night mail,’ explained Sherry, sounding aggrieved. ‘It could have happened to anyone.’


	8. In Which Our Heroine Does Not Lack for Partners

Time not being accustomed to halting, even for a peer of the realm, Lord Sheringham’s nuptials had, overnight, crept a day closer, with the bridegroom no nearer to finding a loophole. By no means satisfied with the outcome of his conference of the previous morning, a dark suspicion that his friend’s heart had not been entirely in it had grown overnight into conviction: at times, Gil had hardly seemed to be listening! No-one could be sorrier that poor Monty had snuffed it – damn it, if he thought that getting leg-shackled to Eudora would exert a Lazarus effect and set all to rights, he might almost consider the sacrifice worthwhile! But, damn it! Tenant for life to that sharp-nosed shrew! He’d liefer spend the rest of his days in Newgate!

‘Marshalsea, you mean,’ supplied Mr Fakenham, to whom the bulk of this oration had been rehearsed, more than once, across the breakfast table at the York Hotel. ‘Don’t usually put debtors in Newgate. Murderers, that sort of thing. You ain’t murdered anybody, Sherry, dear boy, have you?’

Lord Sheringham ground his teeth. ‘Not yet,’ he said.

His cousin, despite his pitiful lack of imagination, was not so lost to reason as to dispute the fact that Gil had let them down sorely, and he agreed most readily to support Sherry in an early sortie down the hill to the White Hart. The Honourable Ferdy’s nicety of taste not allowing for any reduction in his sartorial standards even in the provinces, the planned assault set out later than Sherry might have wished, and the expedition was further delayed by the unfortunate circumstance of a capital shotgun happening to be displayed in a gunsmith’s window on Milsom-street, which just _had_ to be examined, being exactly what Sherry needed to replace his old second-size double barrel.

So it was that the pair came to be passing the Pump Room (Mr Ringwood’s chosen hostelry being conveniently located hard by the Pump Yard), bearing just one or two parcels, when a phaeton hove into view, drawn by a pair of greys. Nothing in the old-fashioned carriage or its sturdy horses could attract the eye of a couple of young bloods on the stroll, but Ferdy, happening to catch a glimpse of the gentleman, ejaculated in astonished accents,‘Good God! There’s Gil! Being driven by a lady!’

‘Oh, take a damper, Ferdy!’ rejoined his lordship. ‘Gil? Driven by a _lady_? The poor chap must have been cozened into taking his grandmother for an airing, and she certainly don’t drive! If you ask me,’ he added, in a rare moment of reflection, ‘the old lady winds him round her little finger!’

Sherry nonetheless humoured his cousin by turning just in time to observe that most exceptional of sights – Mr Ringwood assisting a lady to spring down from a phaeton: a young, petite lady, bang up to the mark, and most decidedly _not_ the dowager!

‘Gil, embarking in an adventure in the petticoat line, at his time of life?’ he cried (his cousin’s voice having fled, the office of making all the exclamations for the two of them fell to Sherry). ‘So _that’s_ what he’s been up to, holed up here all these weeks! I thought it was odd, what with there being such dashed poor sport to be found in Somerset. The sly one! No wonder he wasn’t listening to a word I said yesterday!’

But it was not until the two gentlemen advanced to greet their friend, Ferdy’s eyes almost starting from their sockets, that a full realisation of the situation burst upon the young Viscount. ‘By Jupiter!’ he exclaimed. ‘Damme if it ain’t Hero! Hello, bra— I mean, Hero!’

Our heroine (having enjoyed all the advantage of a day’s preparation for the eventuality, after a casual intelligence from Gil on their drive of the previous morning that his two friends were in town) did not so entirely forget Lady Saltash’s precepts as to throw herself into his arms on the steps outside the Pump Room, nor even to address him in confiding tones as her dear, dear Anthony. If she did respond to Sherry’s salutation with a warmth unbecoming in a young lady of breeding upon a public street, then it went unremarked by her companion, as she was wont to greet even the oldest and dullest among her admirers with just such a glowing smile, and had even been known to waste its rays upon such nobodies as servants and shop-girls.

‘Know each other, do you?’ enquired Ferdy, who liked to get everything sorted out clearly from the outset.

‘I’ve known her all my life,’ replied Sherry, simply. Hero’s modish gown and natty bonnet instinctively prevented him from adding confidences of a more intimate nature: the chit of a girl who had once gone bird’s-nesting with him had flown away, leaving in her place an elegant young lady of fashion, with whom he scarcely felt acquainted.

The happy circumstance of it being a Monday offered Sherry the opportunity to redress this lack that very evening, at the weekly Dress Ball of the New Assembly Rooms. The winter season now being in full swing, the great ballroom, the largest and grandest of the spa, was crammed with more merrymakers than it seemed possible that the town could hold. Its gilt looking-glasses were adorned with garlands of holly and laurel in celebration of the Christmas season; rich swags of gold and silver gauze hung from the ceiling, and berried bunches of mistletoe swung from its five chandeliers. Despite these festive touches, a Bath assembly could not fail to seem slow to one accustomed to London gaieties. No waltzes, not even a cotillion! It was a wonder that Sherry had not instantly repaired to the card-room.

Unused to the hours prevailing outside the metropolis, Sherry had arrived a half hour late and missed the minuets. Hero being engaged to some provincial nobody, he denied the Master of Ceremonies the pleasure of introducing him to an unpartnered dowdy in favour of leaning against the wall to observe her set – though, in the general press of couples, her slender form and smiling face could only occasionally be distinguished. His stance did not long go unattended; he encountered a satirical look through a lorgnette from the other side of the room, and Lady Saltash beckoned unmistakably.

‘Ah, Anthony!’ said her ladyship, when he had threaded his way through the crowds to the spectators’ benches and presented his compliments. ‘You look more and more like your namesake as the years go on.’

Though her quelling tone made it plain that the comparison could scarcely be intended as a compliment, Sherry was not afraid of her. ‘A handsome devil, was he then, my grandfather?’ he enquired.

‘Yes, very! But it was more his air of dissipation to which I referred. Which reminds me, I have yet to congratulate you upon your betrothal. I am sure Lady Eugenia Sheringham will make a most delightful addition to your family.’

‘Eudora, ma’am,’ he corrected. ‘Eudora Bagshot.’

‘Well, I am pleased to hear that you can still recall the lady’s name. When _is_ the happy event?’ But before the dowager could tease him further, Mr Tarleton restored Hero to her party, the dance having ended some minutes earlier. ‘I collect that you have already met Miss Wantage?’

Our heroine, arrayed in apricot gauze, her face flushed with exertion, presented such a ravishing picture that it would have been most ungallant in Sherry had he not enquired whether she might care to stand up with him for the next (though as a general rule he abominated country dances).

‘Oh, Sherry, that would be of all things nice! But I am engaged to Gil, you know, and then to Mr Beckenham, and—’

‘Oh, hang all that!’ his lordship cried, outrageously. ‘Haven’t I known you far longer than the entire pack of ’em laid end on end? And besides, Gil abhors dancing! Don’t you, Gil?’ he added, for his friend had that moment appeared to claim her hand.

‘With Miss Wantage, everything must be a pleasure,’ said Mr Ringwood, not to be outdone in gallantry by the latecomer. ‘But if the lady should prefer to dance this one with you?’

‘Oh, Gil, could I? For I would so like to have a chance to talk over old times with Sherry!’ She grasped Sherry’s offered hand, adding generously, as he bore his prize away, ‘You may take me in to tea!’

‘Known her all his life,’ explained Ferdy kindly. ‘Bound to have plenty to jaw about.’

‘Fobbed off with taking her in to tea!’ exclaimed his grandmother, in quite a different tone. ‘I never mistook you for a genius, Gilbert, but I had thought you less of a slow top than that.’

Indeed, the consolation offered did not prove particularly generous: Hero chattered nineteen to the dozen with all the admirers at her tea-table (in between enthusiastic depredations at a plate of mincemeat tarts), and when the time came to restore her to the ballroom, unthinkingly gave her arm to Lord Sheringham. But the tide was already on the turn against the Viscount; had Sherry only been in possession of the full facts, he would have ditched the privilege that kindled jealousy in more than one gentleman’s breast in favour of a swift exit through any convenient window. For their entrance into the ballroom came just as all three of the Misses Bagshot, together with their Mama, gained the room only a few feet ahead.

‘Hell and the devil confound it! Is there no escape?’ the bridegroom-elect uttered in an undervoice, just as Ferdy enquired, in piercing tones, ‘I say, isn’t that the Bagshots?’

The four females turned, as one.

‘Thought it must be,’ said Ferdy, with satisfaction. ‘I’d know that puce satin with the lilac trimmings anywhere.’

‘Lord Sheringham!’ began Mrs Bagshot. ‘What a pleasant surprise!’

‘No, it isn’t,’ opined young Sophronia, before one of her elder sisters poked her in the ribs.

‘We just happened to be in Bath for Christmas, to recruit my poor husband’s health, your lordship collects, and thought we would just pop our heads in here! Such a frightful squeeze!’

‘Frightful!’ echoed his lordship, dutifully.

‘I’d like to know how we just _happened_ to throw ourselves onto the stage, with barely a minute to pack,’ muttered the irrepressible Sophronia. ‘And then I suppose we just _happened_ to shuffle on our ballgowns in some poky little backroom, without an abigail in sight!’

Our heroine gave a most unheroic gurgle, for the ladies’ toilettes did indeed bear the unmistakable stamp of having been completed in a hurry: Cassandra’s buttons were all awry, Eudora’s overdress was surely inside out, Sophronia’s ringlets retained a curling paper at the back, the matron’s tiara was set somewhat askew, and all four gowns were sadly creased.

‘And our dear little Hero!’ said Mrs Bagshot, turning on her former ward, her smile fixed. ‘I am so glad to see that you are taking full advantage of all your opportunities in Bath! It is such a pity that you have no notion of fashion. That dress! So aging!’

But Hero fixed her eye upon the tiara, and found that she need no longer be afraid of her erstwhile guardian. ‘It is such a shame you never had time to instruct me,’ she rejoined, in honeyed tones.

‘And my sweet Eudora has so missed your lordship since he had to go out of town! I declare she has quite pined away!’

Sherry, as he took his betrothed’s hand to conduct her to the floor, could scarcely help but compare the Ugly Duckling with the Swan – and if he should have expressed a heart-felt wish that it might have been Hero he had found sitting on the wall, and not her cousin, why, who could blame him?


	9. In Which Our Heroine’s Feet are Swept from Beneath Her

The first white flakes of winter decorated the carriages returning from the ball; snow spread its delicate counterpane over the noble terraces and broad streets of Bath overnight. When day dawned on Christmas Eve, the flakes had ceased to fall; the sun soon chased away the thin morning mist and scattered a host of diamonds across trees and rooftops alike. Everyone in the spa town declared themselves quite enchanted, excepting only the street-sweepers, and those chambermaids unfortunate enough to be tasked with clearing their employers’ steps.

On her return from as brisk a walk as might be accomplished in the gardens between Upper and Lower Camden Place when accompanied by an aged pug, somewhat stertorous of breath, Hero did happen to remark the Bagshots’ card lying upon the silver salver placed for that purpose in the hall. (If truth be told, not being entirely lacking in vanity, she was looking to see whether any of her admirers of the night preceding might have chanced to pay a morning call in her absence.) A rectangle of pasteboard, inscribed with howsoever an odious name in flowing copperplate, not numbering amongst the traditional harbingers of doom, the sight entirely failed to strike dread into her heart; the warning thus prepared our heroine but poorly for her reception when she tripped gaily into the morning room.

‘ _You!_ ’ commenced Lady Saltash.

‘We’re returned early, ma’am, as you see,’ replied Hero, either not observing or not heeding the ominous note in her ladyship’s voice. ‘Pug did not at all care for the snow, so we cut—’

‘Pray do not speak to me!’ her ladyship continued, repulsively.

‘Oh, have you the headache, ma’am?’ enquired Hero, softly. ‘Do let me bathe your temples with rosewater, you know that always gives you some relief.’

Lady Saltash dashed away the offered flask. ‘I have been nourishing a viper in my bosom!’ she cried, in tones more glacial by far than the December winds without. ‘Jane Bagshot tells me you served her just such a trick, you designing little hussy!’

‘But, ma’am!’ our bewildered heroine protested, completely at a loss, even after a review of her conscience, as to where her fault might lie.

‘Do not think that you can deceive _me_ with that false look of innocence! Tell me this: are you or are you not encouraging my grandson’s attentions?’

‘But – I thought – I thought you ap-approved!’ blurted Hero, and promptly burst into tears.

‘Approved? Of my grandson making a cake of himself with a feather-brained chit of little breeding and no fortune? Of my _grandson_ allying himself with my _companion_? To be sure, I thought a little flirtation quite unexceptional – but Mrs Bagshot informs me ’tis the talk of the town that you are to be married! I will not have my grandson made an _on dit_ for all the Bath quizzes! Here! Take your wages to the end of the month and be off with you! You have till the stroke of twelve to leave my house!’

Our heroine, blinded by the most natural tears, ran from the elegantly appointed chamber as if from the Wicked Witch’s cave, convinced most especially by the sundry notes and coins pressed in her hand that Lady Saltash must mean every ghastly word.

Time passed: Hero barely noted it. Her ladyship’s carriage was called; no reprieving tap came at her door. The abbey bells tolled: once, twice, thrice … eleven times. Our heroine picked herself up from the floor of her bed-chamber, and wearily began to stuff her old gowns willy-nilly into her battered trunk. It was not an operation that could consume more than a very few minutes, and it was somewhat in advance of the hour appointed that Hero stood once more upon the honey-coloured step of Upper Camden Place with her portmanteau. Her newly educated eye could not fail to inform her that Isabella’s cast-offs (though certainly far superior to rags) were neither fashionable nor flattering; the shivers that soon racked her body gave her intelligence of more urgent import. It would have taken a heroine with a heart of granite, rather than the more usual flesh-and-blood variety, not to give some thought, as she surveyed the lonely path ahead, to whether she had chanced somehow to stray into the pages of quite a different style of fairy story: one in which howling wolves, or ghouls, or dragons, or starving in the snow, figured heavily, and whose young readers went to their beds in fervent fear of snuffing out the nursery candle.

She was not, however, _quite_ alone. Pug, likewise dismayed at its mistress’s display of temper, had waddled after her onto the step. Hero lifted the ancient beast into her arms, and (there being no modish dress to spoil with dog hairs) crushed it to her bosom.

‘Oh, Pug,’ she said. ‘Whatever am I to do?’

It is conceivable that Pug, at this juncture in our tale, stood in for our heroine’s miscreant Fairy Godmother – or perhaps a Good Fairy had been trapped in this rather odiferous canine guise by some passing malevolent Sorcerer – for, just then, the clatter of hooves and carriage wheels upon cobbles made itself heard above the softer sounds of the night’s snowfall slithering from the trees. Our heroine looked up, a forlorn hope swelling her breast, but failing to recognise the sun-gold chariot drawn by two magnificent chestnut steeds, she was surprised and not a little embarrassed when it drew up, with much equine plunging and stamping, beside the step.

‘Hero!’ halloed the driver, alighting nimbly betwixt the heaps of swept snow that littered the pavement, with a care for his gleaming Hessians. ‘Thought you might enjoy a drive. Forget your cloak, did you?’

Our hero tossed her into the carriage (Pug still clasped to her chest), wrapped his sixteen-caped and silver-buttoned greatcoat about her shoulders, and cast a blanket over her lap. ‘Want to take the dog?’ he enquired. ‘Don’t advise it: dashed nuisance!’ The animal so disparaged (well used to travelling with its mistress) made haste to burrow into the blanket on the bench between them, and neither quite had the heart to push it off into the snow. ‘Feel up to handling the chestnuts?’

‘Oh, yes,’ breathed our heroine, and laid aside all her troubles, for the moment, as she took up the reins and whip.

‘Word in your ear, m’dear,’ said her Rescuer, as they moved off. ‘ _Eau de nil_. Not your colour.’

Sixteen-mile-an-hour prime bits of blood were not to be compared with her ladyship’s plodders, and it took all of Hero’s concentration to keep the curricle on the road, let alone to make a creditable appearance, when the swept streets of Bath were left behind and she was forced to follow in the ruts of heavier vehicles through the snow. Once or twice she thought of relinquishing the ribbons, when an error drew a particularly anguished hiss of breath from the seat beside, but as this was to be her last drive _ever_ , she shoved doubts aside and soldiered on. It was several miles before she recalled that her trunk, and the entirety of her possessions, still languished on the step of Camden Place, and still more before she thought to ask her companion where they were headed.

‘Chipping Sodbury,’ he replied. ‘Neat little inn there: the Portcullis.’

‘Chipping Sodbury?’ echoed Hero. It was a market town some fifteen miles north of Bath, not mentioned in any of the traveller’s guides as boasting any peculiar attractions beyond the former residence of a certain Dr Jenner, which could hardly be thought to appeal to a man of our hero’s stamp.

‘Eloping. Thought it best.’

‘Oh! Eloping! L-lady Saltash spoke to you too, then?’

Mr Ringwood replied in the affirmative, and the conversation dropped. Hero, never having previously eloped, had formed no clear idea of what the enterprise might entail; some faint thought that the lady should be protesting more flitted into her head, but a tricky bend soon pushed it straight out again.


	10. In Which Our Tale Acquires Some Tangles

Picture a desperate flight through some remote and rugged valley: imagine a rude inn, far from civilisation’s humanising touch: envision relentless pursuers and countless dangers. Alas for our unlucky lovers! Even a snug coverlet of snow could not transform the wide streets of Chipping Sodbury into the wilderness that their endeavour cried out for, even the sternest detractors of its principal coaching establishment would not so far take leave of their senses as to abuse it as a rude inn, and the closest to danger that their journey could offer was some trifling scratched paintwork at a corner taken too wide. It would, besides, have taken a more imaginative pair of lovers than ours to sustain a high romance upon a thoroughfare bearing so prosaic a name as Horse Street.

The post-chaise and four that Mr Ringwood had bespoken at the Portcullis for their onward journey not yet being prepared, the two lovers had little choice but to step inside the hostelry. The innkeeper seemed to discern that he was assisting in some clandestine venture, for he smirked into his whiskers as he served them, and the private parlour into which he ushered them (though the inn was half empty, it not happening to be market day) was cramped, shabby and dark. Even Pug took an immediate dislike to the room, lumbering round and round in circles, scratching at a side door and yelping to be let out, till our heroine was forced to cosset the animal upon her lap to prevent a most unseemly howling.

This latter circumstance proved a trifle trying to Mr Ringwood. Not a particularly vain man, he had formed a pretty accurate assessment of his attractions to the feminine sex, and had never quite pictured his bride-to-be melting gratefully into his arms. He was, however, somewhat piqued to find his love-making ignored, and his place usurped by a pug-dog as ill-favoured as it was malodorous. This might perhaps account for the strange sensation akin to relief which warred in his breast with a more natural frustration when the object of his affections started up, exclaiming, ‘Surely that is Isabella’s voice? Do, pray, go and discover if it is! For here am I tied to this odious dog, and daren’t let go lest he should dash out and get himself run over, and then I shall be in even more of a coil!’

Gil was sorely tempted to animadvert upon the fate the deuced dog deserved, but never having previously quarrelled with a lady, he did not feel the opening chapter of his marital life was quite the place to start, and satisfied his feelings by opening the door with rather more force than the operation strictly required. He had no expectation of encountering Miss Milborne, the likelihood being remote that such a proper young lady – who must surely by now be betrothed to a duke – should frequent the corridors of a common coaching inn. It was hard to say which of the two was more surprised, or more embarrassed, when the unclosed door discovered that proper young lady—struggling to escape a clinch!

‘Oh,’ said Miss Milborne, faintly, when her eye encountered Mr Ringwood. Her lack of eloquence must be forgiven, for she had endured a most trying week. Losing one suitor to a duel was appalling, _unspeakable_! Losing two—the vocabulary of a lady simply did not stretch to the event. Not that she could ever have accepted either Sir Montagu or dear George, but their very existence lent her fortitude. And in their absence! His Grace of Severn had indeed condescended to propose, and his speeches of gratitude upon her acceptance proved as self-important and long-winded as his proposal. Oh, how she had _wished_! But it was not to be. She would be a duchess, her dear Mama was effervescent with delight, and no doubt her grace the dowager Duchess, if not improving on closer acquaintance, would eventually remove to one of the staggeringly many minor ducal estates.

It was in this state of resignation, walking up and down the lane that skirted the edge of the ducal park, twisting the sapphire ducal ring that dwarfed her slender finger round and round (and exercising her last shred of independence to do both without either footman or abigail), that the unfortunate maiden encountered a handsome figure astride a dark horse. Though visions not entirely dissimilar to the one before her had troubled her repose on more than one occasion, she was too practical a girl by far to pay attention to dreams, and matters might well have taken a quite different turn had not a napkin wound about his brow chanced to catch her attention (maidens, even the properest of them, being highly susceptible to details that might pass straight by a masculine pair of eyes). No sooner had ‘Oh, but you are wounded!’ passed her lips, than Isabella was lost. How she went from there to here she was not entirely certain; if pressed she would have been forced to own that it had not been in the least proper – besides being _most_ uncomfortable!

‘Dearest Isabella!’ exclaimed Hero, jumping up to embrace her friend. ‘How frozen you feel! You will take a chill, I’m sure, standing around in that draughty corridor. Do come in and take some coffee with us! It is a perfectly horrid little parlour, but the fire is warm as toast. Oh, and this must be his grace!’ she added. ‘Do pray introduce us!’ (Our heroine’s lapse in manners must be excused, for she had never encountered a peer of greater rank than Viscount, and she could not rightly be said to have been formally introduced to him; it was, however, in some ways fortunate that the gentleman in question in no way resembled the Duke, his grace being somewhat of a stickler for ceremony.)

Miss Milborne blushed to the roots of her disarrayed copper locks. ‘It was such a beautiful afternoon that I rid out from Severn Towers, with – a friend,’ she explained. (In point of fact, the ducal residence lay so close to the market town that it was a wonder it had not been christened Chipping Sodbury Towers.)

Lord Wrotham, for of course it was he, only laughed as the introductions were performed. ‘I never thought I should be glad to be mistaken for that bag of wind!’ he exclaimed. Though his week had been quite as trying his companion’s, though his prospects (had any rational observer been on hand to assess them) must appear bleak in the extreme, he had, so he thought, carried off a prize from beneath the prominent nose of his aristocratic rival, and his victory had put him in sufficient charity with the world as to cast aside his habitual thundercloud aspect for a sunnier mien.

Our heroine, in her joy at being reunited so unexpectedly with her childhood friend, had quite forgotten poor Pug. The dog, perceiving an open door, made towards it by the shortest route: between the slush-stained top boots of the baron. ‘Was that your hound?’ enquired the owner of the boots. ‘Shall I retrieve him?’

In the event, Lord Wrotham returned not only bearing the much-maligned lapdog, but deep in conversation with two young sprigs of fashion, draped in twin capes of drab; they were lately arrived at the Portcullis, and most anxious to take coffee with Mr Ringwood and his companion.

‘What I want to know is, how the devil did you manage to call Monty out?’ Lord Sheringham was just enquiring, as the three entered the parlour.

His cousin, the Honourable Ferdy, was much struck by the bandage adorning his friend’s temple. ‘And how in heaven did Revesby manage to hit you?’

‘Didn’t hit me,’ replied Lord Wrotham, his sunny look abruptly admitting one or two clouds. ‘The curst coward drew a sword-stick.’

‘Always said he was a Bad Man,’ said Ferdy, uncommonly pleased to find his character assessment borne out. ‘He’s an ivory-turner, that’s what Duke says.’ (Ferdy referred, of course, to his brother, the Honourable Marmaduke Fakenham; while his Grace of Severn cordially detested Sir Montagu, no epithet so vulgar as ivory-turner would ever pass his exalted lips.) ‘That why you called him out, George?’

Lord Sheringham helped himself to a cup of coffee and settled at the table beside his cousin. ‘More likely to have called him out because he insulted the Incomparable,’ he suggested. ‘That it, George?’

‘Oh, how very romantic!’ cried Hero.

‘I pray not – the thought of a duel over my honour is entirely abhorrent,’ said Miss Milborne frostily. ‘The whole matter is simply too unbearable to contemplate.’

‘Shouldn’t know anything about it,’ pronounced Mr Ringwood. ‘Not good _ton_ to discuss a duel in front of a lady.’

Lord Wrotham snatched the brief moment of quiet that followed. ‘Dash it, don’t any of you ever listen?’ he cried, striking the wall so hard with his fist that an unluckily positioned portrait of Princess Charlotte was almost unseated. ‘I didn’t call him out!’

‘But it was in all the papers!’ protested Hero.

‘Mustn’t believe everything you read in the papers,’ said Gil.

‘Gil’s right,’ said Ferdy, wisely. ‘Remember that sketch with the donkey in the _Gazette_ last year—’

Mr Ringwood put his finger to his lips. ‘Not in front of the ladies!’ he cautioned, in an urgent undertone.

‘Or was it in the _Chronicle_?’ Ferdy mused.

Lord Wrotham’s expression seemed to suggest that his recall of the article in question was somewhat clearer than his friend’s. ‘My sister Emily’s husband hushed it all up,’ he continued hastily. ‘Gave out that it was an honourable duel. Damme if the fellow don’t turn out to be someone in the government!’

The Honourable Ferdy shook his head gravely. ‘Might have known there’d be something peculiar about him. Always was a dashed quiz.’

Mr Ringwood declined the distraction of his friend’s brother-in-law. ‘That’s all well and good, George, but it don’t leave you much better off. Still got the Runners after you.’

‘The family got together and cut a deal,’ said George. ‘My cousin’s offered twenty thousand for the lands in Leicestershire, if I clear the country  –  and renounce the title. Turns out the fellow’s always had a fancy to style himself his lordship, if you can believe it!’

‘Makes sense,’ said Ferdy. ‘My father’s always liked it.’

‘I’d take the blunt over a title any day,’ opined the Viscount, who was lucky enough to be blessed with both. ‘Anything less than a dukedom don’t do a man a scrap of good when he’s in dun territory.’

‘Is that even legal, old boy?’ enquired Gil. ‘Sounds to me like a hum.’

‘I dare say it ain’t,’ rejoined George. ‘They’re to put it about that I’ve blown my brains out. There must be any number of fellows who’ll swear I’ve threatened to.’

‘I’d swear you’d threatened to blow your brains out,’ offered the ever-helpful Ferdy. ‘You’d swear George’s threatened to blow his brains out, wouldn’t you?’ he added, turning to his two friends.

‘Hope it won’t come to that,’ said Gil.

‘At least you don’t have to get riveted,’ muttered Sherry grimly, his thoughts once again reverting to his own pressing problem.

Mr Ringwood fortified himself with a large pinch of snuff, before enquiring bluntly, ‘So what the deuce are you doing here, George, dear boy?’

‘That’s right!’ said Sherry. ‘You ought to be in Paris by now!’

‘Might be on his way to Paris,’ said Ferdy.

‘Dashed strange route to take from London if he is,’ said Sherry.

‘I’ve as much right to be here as any of you!’ cried George belligerently.

‘Of course you’ve the right, George,’ soothed Gil. ‘No call to get in a taking.’

Lord Wrotham cast his eye about the parlour, which was beginning to look rather crowded. ‘If it comes to that, what the devil are you all doing here?’ he enquired.

‘Good question!’ exclaimed Sherry, all at once recalling precisely what had brought him there. ‘What _are_ you doing here, Gil? Because if it’s what I think you’re doing, I’ll—’

But the world was fated to be denied knowledge, for the moment, of the Viscount’s plans: a swift rap fell upon the door, and the landlord, closely followed by two most ill-assorted people, erupted into the room. ‘There they are, your grace,’ announced the landlord and departed, clutching to his chest a gratuity so generous as almost to amount to a bribe.

The words ‘unhand my betrothed, you blackguard!’, oft-rehearsed during that gentleman’s gallop to the inn, died on his Grace of Severn’s lips as he perceived said betrothed comfortably sipping coffee by the fireside with what he took to be an abigail, and not one but four gentleman (not to mention a pug-dog) filling the parlour.

His companion, being fashioned from sterner stuff, was not so readily silenced. ‘Oh! I am come too late!’ she began. ‘I see I am betrayed! That shameless hussy has stolen my loved one’s affections quite away!’ No doubt the lady considered her performance, as she sank with a sigh onto a conveniently placed sofa, quite the equal of Mrs Siddons’ Desdemona, but her audience was inescapably reminded of Mr Punch’s mistress – not merely for her most ungenteel screech, but also for the scrumpled state of all her muslin flounces.

‘Eudora!’ cried Lord Sheringham, and it was not the joyful cry of a man unexpectedly encountering his beloved. Turning upon the Duke, he enquired pugnaciously, ‘What the devil d’you mean by bringing that termagant?’

‘It was no doing of mine,’ replied his grace, with cold dignity. ‘I encountered the lady in the coachyard.’ The Duke paused, and those privileged to know him well might have perceived that he was somewhat at a loss as to how to proceed. ‘Ahem, struggling to escape from the luggage box of a hired conveyance.’

‘Must have got stuck in there,’ said Ferdy. ‘Easily done.’

Sherry enquired, with deep suspicion, ‘A red-bodied carriage with yellow wheels?’ and when his grace agreed that the equipage might perhaps have answered to that description, the Viscount exploded with rage. ‘I knew it!’ he cried. ‘The little sneak!’ He advanced upon his bride-to-be, eyes flashing, fists clenched. ‘How dare you stow away in my carriage to spy on me!’

‘Accident,’ opined his cousin. ‘Could have happened to anyone.’

Hero, no stranger to her former playmate’s tantrums, threw herself betwixt the two. ‘Oh, do stop, Sherry! Can’t you see she’s almost done for?’ And indeed the lady did look white as wax. ‘Help me, Isabella! Lend her your coat, Gil! And do pray order a glass of ratafia to revive her!’

‘Brandy, that’s the thing,’ said Lord Wrotham, wrapping his own cloak around the stowaway’s trembling shoulders. ‘That catlap wouldn’t revive a bonfire in Hell itself!’

‘Oh, I am shook near to death!’ wailed Miss Bagshot, with rather more justice than her earlier allegations. ‘I thought it should break every bone in my body!’

‘Serve you right, you little spy!’ declared Sherry.

‘Oh, how can you be so heartless, Sherry, when Eudora is in such distress?’ enquired our heroine, once a few sips of brandy and the fire’s warmth had restored some little colour to Miss Bagshot’s cheeks. ‘I dare say it was very wrong of her to stow away in your carriage – besides being most silly! But can you blame poor Eudora for distrusting your intentions, when you behave towards her in such a shabby fashion?’

‘But how can I help it, with that curst Trust of mine ruining everything? With that _slug_ Paulett at Sheringham Place lining his dashed pockets with _my_ money! With my Uncle Prosper too damn idle to lift a finger to put a stop to it! Not to mention that Bagshot bat always on at me, “yes your lordship, no your lordship”! It’s all so unfair!’

Our heroine nobly declined a digression onto the sartorial options open to the mollusc, though the picture did make her smile. ‘I do not think it was kind of you to promise marriage if the idea is so distasteful to you,’ she said solemnly, fixing her eyes upon Sherry’s face.

‘It’s not _marriage_ that’s distasteful,’ said his lordship. ‘Dash it, if I thought— You know, it ought to have been you on that wall, Hero, it really ought!’

Hero gave a little choke that might equally have been a laugh or a sob; her own reflections had often been troubled by just such a ridiculous notion. ‘Oh, it’s so like you, Anthony, to blame me for something I could not help in the least!’

And as he looked into that heart-shaped face, with its adorable little nose and its soft grey eyes brimming with unshed tears, Lord Sheringham found himself upon his knees on the grimy floor of a back parlour in a common coaching inn, proposing marriage for the third time in his life.


	11. In Which Some Pieces of the Puzzle Come to Light

Mr Ringwood’s taste in reading matter inclined more to the racing results than to the fairy stories with which his betrothed beguiled her spare hours; he must therefore be excused for his failure to recognise a Happy Ending, even when it was unfolding under his nose. However poorly Nature had equipped him for the role of Handsome Prince, after successfully completing all the labours that his grandmother had set him, Gil disdained to have the part usurped with quite so little ceremony. ‘I am afraid,’ he stated, at his most precise, ‘that Miss Wantage is already engaged.’

‘Well, so am I!’ rejoined Sherry. ‘But that hardly signifies!’ Unused to his friend enjoying the advantage of height over him, and misliking the way that Gil was clenching and unclenching his fists, the Viscount sprang nimbly to his feet. ‘If I marry Hero before my wedding day, not even my mother will be able to make me marry Eudora.’

‘That’s right,’ said Ferdy. ‘There’s a word for it, big-something, bigonia, bigwiggy… on the tip of my tongue.’

‘Oh, you mean bigamy,’ supplied Hero. ‘That’s illegal – or at least I think it is. Didn’t Abraham have two wives? Or was it three?’

‘Don’t think I know anyone called Abraham. You don’t mean Wilbraham?’ Ferdy enquired. Irrepressibly honest, he added,‘Don’t know anyone called Wilbraham either. Do you, Gil?’

‘Silly! He’s from the Bible!’

‘Oh, I definitely don’t know him then. Very bad _ton_ , those Biblical chaps.’

But the Honourable Ferdy’s religious instruction was destined to be cut short, as Miss Bagshot just then threw herself upon the bosom of her bridegroom. Though Sherry was, in general, adept at evading his beloved’s embraces, he chanced to be distracted at the fatal moment by an urgent need to brush away the specks of dirt from the parlour floor adhering to his less-than-gleaming Hessians. Eudora’s thoughts seemed far from loving: indeed, she appeared intent on gouging out her husband-to-be’s eyes (an uncharitable quest, for those cornflower-blue sparklers were quite his best feature). All the gentlemen were required to separate the pair, and when that end was achieved, the lady straightway went into strong hysterics, so that Hero was obliged to empty a jug of water over her – such being the only treatment known to have been efficacious in the case previously. Pacifying the landlord, who had been drawn to the battleground by the sundry screams and crashes attendant upon the struggle, was not to be attained with so little expense. (It was fortunate, perhaps, that his Grace of Severn had come armed with sufficient blunt to buy off his rival, should the need arise.)

Once an armistice had been negotiated and quiet restored – or at least as much quiet as might be attained by eight young persons and an elderly lapdog, when squeezed into a parlour that could best be described as poky (which is to say, about as much as reigned at the Pantheon Bazaar on a sale day) – Mr Ringwood resumed his offensive. ‘Never did explain what brought you to the Portcullis, Sheringham,’ he began.

‘What brought _me_ to the Portcullis!’ exclaimed the Viscount. ‘What brought _me_ to the Portcullis! Hah! I might ask you the same question, _Ringwood_ ,’ he added, with an awful emphasis upon the last word.

‘No need to take a pet,’ advised his cousin. ‘Might be any number of reasons for Gil to visit Chipping Sodbury,’ and the Honourable Ferdy began to enumerate the possibilities, ticking them off on his slender fingers.

‘Idiot!’ said Sherry, not without affection. ‘You know perfectly well what brings Gil here! You got a note, too!’

‘Slipped my mind,’ explained Ferdy.

It fell to Mr Ringwood to voice the question on the lips of half the party (for Miss Milborne and Lord Wrotham seemed to be finding more congenial matters to occupy those parts). ‘What note?’ he enquired.

The two young cousins delved among the pockets of their twin blue coats. It was not a brief operation; indeed, Mr Stultz, whose services were preferred by both gentlemen, would have stared at the amount of paper that proved to be marring the lines of his creations. A violet-perfumed _billet-doux_ (‘Sherry’s opera-dancer’), a bill for lilac gloves (‘lilac will be the new lavender, you’ll see’) and a list of the starters in the Tarporley handicap (‘won a hundred guineas on Willington Wonder’) – not to mention assorted vowels, tickets, advertisements, invitation cards and the like – were each unearthed to cries of triumph, only to be discarded in disgust. (The love letter, on being consigned to the fire, added a scent of the boudoir to the parlour, which was not unwelcome as its windows opened to the stables.)

At the final tally, not one, not two, but _three_ notes joined the muddle of whips, gloves, cups and other clutter strewn across the coffee table. Hero took up the one addressed to the Honourable Ferdinand Fakenham, and commenced reading it aloud. ‘“If you value your friendship” – friendship’s underlined twice – “with our mutual acquaintance, be at the Portcullis, Chipping Sodbury, tomorrow afternoon without fail.” It’s signed “A Well-wisher.” Whoever can it be?’ Hero twisted the paper around in her fingers, as if it might answer her question – and perhaps, in the hands of a true heroine, it might. ‘Look!’ she continued. ‘The letter heading is from the White Hart. Isn’t that where you are lodging, Gil?’

‘Let me see that,’ said Gil. Though Mr Ringwood was not, in general, renowned for the rapidity of his comprehension, not even his grandmother truly rated him a slow top, and a suspicion of a most unwelcome nature was lumbering into the light inside his head.

Our innocent heroine blushed at the contents of the second note, and declined to read it to the company. ‘This one to Sherry is in the same hand,’ was all she would vouchsafe. ‘Whatever can it mean?’

‘Chilham!’ Gil concluded, after a cursory glance at the evidence. He threw both documents back onto the table with a gusty sigh. ‘Mistake to ask him to pack. Ought to have known.’

‘Chilham,’ repeated Ferdy. ‘Sounds familiar. Chilham, Chilham… I say, ain’t that the name of your man?’

‘Not any more,’ said Gil grimly. ‘Though how I’m to find another man half as good at getting claret spots out of cravats, I can’t imagine.’

‘Claret’s the very devil,’ said his friend. ‘Worse than coffee.’ The Honourable Ferdy commenced a minute examination of his necktie in the mirror above the fireplace, as if the mere thought might somehow have spoiled the snowy perfection of its folds.

‘You can’t let your valet go just because he wrote a few lines to your friends,’ said Hero.

‘Can’t I?’ said Gil.

‘It would be almost as cruel…’ started Hero slowly. ‘Almost as cruel… as turning a d-dependent out of your house j-just b-because…’ Here sniffles overcame our heroine. ‘J-just b-because someone fl-flirted with them,’ she finished bravely.

‘What’s flirting to do with anything?’ enquired Sherry. ‘Keep to the point, brat! And don’t sniff!’ He chucked her under the chin, quite taking the sting from his words and, indeed, restoring a hesitant half-smile to our heroine’s lovely countenance. ‘What I want to know is, what the deuce Gil’s man thought he was about, writing to me.’

‘More to the point,’ remarked Gil, ‘weren’t there _three_ of the dashed things?’ Mr Ringwood found, on reflection, that he did not care to have his valet’s motivations examined too closely, even by so lightweight an intellect as the Viscount’s.

‘Pon my word, I think you’re right,’ said Ferdy. He must have caught some hint of his friend’s concern, for he even left off his sartorial inspection to assist, as best he could, in the hunt for the mislaid note, picking up one item after another from the coffee table and, when that failed, patting down his pockets.

‘Shove over, Ferdy!’ said the Viscount. ‘Can’t you see you’re blocking a man’s light.’

‘I see it!’ Hero retrieved the third missive from beneath the table, where some draught must have dispatched it. ‘But…’ she faltered, as she brushed away the cobwebs clinging to the paper (no doubt attracted by the spidery character of the penmanship), ‘isn’t that L-lady Saltash’s hand?’

The discovery of his valet’s treachery seemed to have resigned Mr Ringwood to any reversal. ‘That’s my grandmother’s fist,’ he confirmed, with no more than a mournful shake of his head. ‘Ought to know. Seen enough of it. Always writing to summon me to do one thing or another.’

‘But… however did Lady Saltash know where we were going to be this afternoon?’ For, despite all her reading, our heroine was not very worldly wise, and had yet to comprehend all those wiles that might be employed by a Wicked Witch. ‘And why would her ladyship write to Sherry? It was not _Sherry_ that she was so f-furious over.’

Our poor heroine could not help sniffing just a little as she recalled her erstwhile employer’s strictures that morning upon her conduct – however little deserved they might then have been, it could not be denied that now she deserved every cutting word. Eloping! With her ladyship’s grandson! Lady Saltash would never forgive her now. But however had it come about? She was sure that she had never intended to elope. All at once, the topsy-turvy events of the day appeared to Hero to be akin to one of those wooden puzzles that so teased her Bagshot cousins, in which every piece must be slotted into place just right for the solution to fall out.

‘ _Thought_ it was too straightforward by half.’ Gil sighed. ‘Might have known the old fox was up to one of her tricks. Not like my grandmother, though, not to be around to enjoy the show.’

‘What tricks?’ enquired Sherry. ‘What show? What in heaven’s name are you jawing about, Gil?’

But a most unexpected turn of events was to forestall the unmasking of the Wicked Witch’s plot.


End file.
